They are on the docks, by the prow of the ship, the Katrina, a Norwegian passenger-cargo ship that will load up in a few hours, and above them rises the ship’s bow in a perfect curve like a saber. They can’t see the river. It is only a black expanse flickering with the occasional hazy gleam, a will-o’-the-wisp perhaps. They can smell its odor of mud and diesel, hear its sound like a mouth sucking at the concrete bank. All five of them stand at the foot of a crane, in precisely the location planned for the meeting, and stamp their feet in the cold. Irène has tied her scarf around her head, and her coat collar is turned up, the lower part of her face gagged with red wool. Sara is wearing a black beret pulled down to her eyebrows, and she’s buried inside a reefer jacket that’s too big for her because it belonged to her father, a gigantic anarchist who died in Lerida in August ’38 during the retreat on the Ebro.
Alain and Daniel look the same from a distance: cap and sheepskin coat. The only difference is the large bag and the suitcase at Alain’s feet. Gilbert is sitting on a crate, feet resting on a knot of ropes, and he smokes as he looks out over the dark water.
They have been here for ten minutes. The man had told them eleven sharp, but they’re here and he is not. Nor is the boatswain, who’s supposed to be in charge of boarding.
They hear men shout then laugh. One of them begins to sing, but his voice breaks up in a fit of coughing. Somewhere an engine starts up, purrs, stops.
Daniel listens to these erratic noises and tries to put images to this soundtrack, but all he can see is their group, the five of them, silent and alone and frozen stiff, and he frames a series of dimly lit close-ups on their darkened faces. He looks for Alain’s eyes but sees only a sparkless hollow, extinguished by his own night. He goes up to him and offers him a cigarette.
The flame of the American lighter. Illuminating only the shadow of eyelashes. Alain nods his thanks.
“You O.K.?” Daniel asks.
“I’d better be.”
Forced smile. My brother, thinks Daniel, giving him a little punch on the arm.
“Everything will be alright. We’ll get through this.”
The girls come up to them. The pack of cigarettes is passed from hand to hand. Their faces light up in the glow of the embers, eyes shine but say nothing.
“There’s someone coming,” says Gilbert.
He gets to his feet and joins them and they all watch the figure walking towards them. It’s him. Jacky. Long coat, trilby hat. Tall and broad, with a supple, silent gait.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, greeting them.
He shakes the boys’ hands, keeping Alain’s in his. “So? You changed your mind?”
“No. I’m not backing out. I’ve not spent all that money for nothing.”
“The money’s nothing. I’ll pay you back right now if you want.”
“Keep it. I know what I’m doing. This war . . . I’m not going. I’ve talked about it so many times with Daniel. And anyway I want to leave this place. I can’t stand it anymore, I . . .”
He stops talking and breathes in, as if he had been suffocating.
“I want to see what it’s like, in other places. But not in Algeria.”
Irène walks up to him. She holds his collar and plants a kiss on his forehead.
“Comme je descendais les fleuves impassibles / Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs . . .”10
He looks at her, surprised.
“It’s poetry: Le Bateau ivre by Rimbaud. Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir!”11
“Why drunken?”
“You’ll find that out for yourself pretty soon!” Jacky says.
He laughs and pats his shoulder. Irène starts to mutter something then changes her mind.
“Maybe by becoming a sailor, you’ll put poetry in your life,” Sara says. “You’ll see sunrises that we’ve never seen.”
He shrugs.
“I couldn’t care less about poetry. I just want to get out of here. The war’s just an excuse for finally doing it.”
They hear footsteps echoing on the gangway, further off. Jacky squints into the darkness to get a better view of the figure now walking on the dock.
“That’s Oskar, the boatswain.”
A sturdy man walks towards them, hands in his trouser pockets. He’s wearing a woollen hat on the top of his head and a pea jacket of no discernible color. Maybe grey. He says hello to no-one in particular, his voice muffled. Round, smooth face. Clear, almost transparent eyes. Jacky starts talking to him in English, supported by a full range of hand movements and nods. The other man seems to understand him. He stares at Alain the whole time, looking preoccupied because Jacky is jabbering at him.
“O.K.,” he says after a while.
Then he smiles at Alain and places a thick, short-fingered hand on his shoulder.
Alain seems to become a little boy again. He looks at the boatswain with fear and respect, eyes shining. His friends are crowded around him, trying to read his face, which is held apart from the night by those incredibly clear eyes.
“Me speak a little French,” he says. “Few words. But the cook he is French too so you can ask him. Good guy, you’ll see. You’ll help him, at the beginning. Serve the passengers in cabins, and other things. O.K.?”
“Oui,” Alain says, but the word gets stuck in his throat and he has to cough to force it out. “Oui,” he repeats. “C’est d’accord.” And then in English: “Alright.”
The boatswain laughs.
“Oh, you speak English! No problem, then!”
Above them, on board the ship, men are talking loudly while a muffled, metallic, grating movement echoes on the bridge.
“In one hour we leave,” says Oskar. “High tide. Twenty passengers for Tangiers, and afterwards Dakar. Hot down there! Not like here or like my country, Norway! I have to show you to the captain.”
Jacky waves goodbye to the company, gives Oskar a friendly dig in the ribs and walks silently away.
Alain looks at the other four with a sorrowful smile.
“Alright, well, this time . . .”
He takes Irène in his arms and they kiss cheeks noisily while trying to smile.
“I’ll think about your drunken boat,” he tells her. “But, I swear, I won’t drink too much! I’ll be a good boy! I mean, I’m already a deserter, so . . .”
“No, it’s called a conscientious objector. And I don’t really know what being good means these days.”
Sara goes next, hiding her face in the young man’s chest.
“We said we weren’t going to cry,” he reminds her.
She looks up at him, eyes shining, and shakes her head.
“I’m fine. Anyway, it’s not like they were going to shoot you! You’ll be back in five weeks, and you can pay us a little visit before you go off on your travels again! But I’ll miss you, all the same.”
She turns around quickly and stands next to Irène and the two of them remain with their backs to the boys, whispering to each other.
Daniel and Gilbert give him a bear hug and clap him on the back, then finally kiss cheeks noisily, to show that they’re men, that their kisses are not the sly, quiet type that signify tenderness or love.
“It is a bit like a cousin going away,” Gilbert explains.
“Or a brother,” says Daniel.
Alain grabs the collar of his sheepskin coat and pulls him close. He talks into his ear. Their eyes shine with the same dark gleam.
“Be careful, O.K.? Don’t be a hero. Get yourself a cushy job. Let those other jerk-offs march into battle if they want to, but you need to come back in one piece. Understood?”
“Yeah, I know. Jesus, give me a break! You sound like Maurice. You’re going to see the world and I’m going to see the war. I’ve already told you why I want to see it. But I’m no hero. That stuff’s just for the movies. I have no desire to snuff it over there. And this way, we’ll have plenty to talk about. I want us to be able to tell each other what we’ve been up to the next time we’re together. So don’t worry. I’ll be back. Just like you. O.K.?”
Alain nods. He smiles sadly.
“Just be careful. You’re not only going to see the war, you’re going to be smack in the middle of it.”
“You need to go,” Oskar says. “It’s time now.”
He walks away, past the side of the ship, head down, without turning around. Alain tears himself away. Takes a step back, holding his bags, and looks at the four of them.
“I . . .” he starts to say.
Then he goes. He runs behind the boatswain, arms tensed by the unbearable weight of all his belongings. The sailor stops and waits for him. Then Alain drops his bags and runs to Sara and takes her in his arms and lifts up her slight body and they kiss full on the mouth as they’ve never dared to before.
“I’ll write to you,” he says. “One day, we’ll be together for good.”
They gently push each other away and stare deeply into each other’s eyes for—what?—three seconds. Then it’s over. Alain joins Oskar, who takes one of the bags and throws it over his back as if it weighed no more than a pillow.
They listen to their footsteps on the gangway, they see their friend’s hand slide up the railing, but he doesn’t lean over, not even once, and Daniel knows that he doesn’t want to show his face twisted with sorrow, wet with tears.
“Shall we go?”
Sara has turned around, already near the warehouse. She waits impatiently, hands in pockets, tapping her foot. Irène joins her first and the two of them start walking, quickly and lightly, arm in arm. Daniel and Gilbert quicken their pace and go through the half-open gate just after the girls. They don’t speak. They let the girls share their secrets while the four of them walk northward along the narrow street, past the fences that surround the port.
A little further on, just as a breeze hits them cold in the face, Irène and Sara burst out laughing then turn towards them:
“Don’t you know?” Sara says. “I’m going to get married!”
All four of them laugh. They joke around, push each other, indifferent to the cold wind and the tough times. Then they fall silent and walk back towards their homes, north toward their neighborhood, which is like a suburb, almost like an island in fact, surrounded by the river, the wet docks, the marshes, connected to the rest of the city by three swing bridges when there are no boats trapped between the locks trying to manoeuvre their way into dry dock. Few cars pass, and behind the fences are the train carriages, the trucks and the warehouses and the thousands of logs from Africa, all covered by the night like a tarpaulin. Nothing moves. A few suspended street lamps illuminate nothing but themselves. Their bulbs shine so weakly that the light never reaches the ground, remaining enclosed in a feeble halo. Here and there, in the forecastle of a cargo ship, a lit-up porthole pierces a patch of brilliance in the night.
Daniel tries to imagine Alain alone in his cabin, perhaps testing his mattress or putting a bag on the floor, and he feels a pang in his heart that makes him grimace in the darkness. He doesn’t know what a true friend is. He doesn’t know the difference between an ami and a copain. He should talk to Irène about this: she knows so much about words and their nuances. Friend, brother . . . Sister . . . Who is what? He watches Irène’s chestnut hair bubbling over her scarf; it looks almost blonde in the darkness and he feels like holding her by the neck and pressing her close to him and . . . Once again, he is seized by this desire that often comes to him when she moves close to him with those intimate, tender gestures, those bursts of sisterliness that she has sometimes, that childish teasing that he has always known in her, or at least since her parents welcomed him to their home and adopted him and then loved him like their own son and this girl looked at him for the first time with those wide laughing eyes, pulling softly on his ear.
She is his sister, obviously. And yet, not at all. Above all, she is the person he feels closest to in the whole world. Who senses every shiver within him. The one he let enter his secret by opening, for hours at a time, the gates to his sufferings and nightmares, and whispering it all into her ear. The whispers sometimes choked with sobs. That is how she knows about the shining eyes of the sparrows hopping on the rooftop in the cold, the tiny birds watching that little giant pressed against the chimney. That is why she has almost the same memories as him. She went up with him to the roof, when he told her about the day of the round-up, so much so that sometimes he surprises himself by remembering that she was next to him as he leaned against the chimney, under the grey and icy sky, surrounded by ruffled birds, waiting for someone to come and get him.
Irène.
He watches her walking and he loves the way she moves and this thought disturbs him, dizzying him like a child on a merry-go-round seeing the faces rush past without being able to make any of them out.
Especially when, just after the swing bridge, the girls start singing “Milord” at the tops of their voices and dancing badly and laughing and inviting them, Gilbert and him, a pair of clodhoppers who follow without saying a word, to dance with them.
They fall silent again as they get closer to home, passing the walls of the factories, listening in spite of themselves to the deafening roar of the steelworks, groaning like a man-eating monster.
When Irène and Daniel find themselves alone, they hold hands for a moment, as they have often done, since childhood.
“Does she really want to marry Alain, Sara?”
Irène giggles.
“She’s mad. But I’ve been telling her that, about Alain, for a long time. The way he looks at her and all that.”
“Oh, really? I didn’t notice anything. And he never mentioned it.”
She pinches his arm.
“You never notice anything like that. You probably wouldn’t even notice if a girl snuck into your bed! That’s because you don’t look. Anyway, guys don’t talk about love, everyone knows that. All they can do is go on about their performance and laugh like idiots.”
Daniel can think of nothing to say in reply to this. He registers the words, tries to understand them, files them away in his pocket wrapped in a handkerchief.
Lying in bed, he tries to fall asleep, hoping to dream of ships and vast horizons and swarming ports, all ablaze with sunlight. He forces his imagination, summoning memories from films, but the images constantly vanish or freeze and turn dark. He falls asleep, his heart in chaos, his mind heavy with confusion and fear.
In the middle of the night he wakes up touching his leg, which has just been torn off by an exploding grenade. He lies there panting, covered in sweat, still blinded by the sunlight that flooded his nightmare, one hand touching his knee, and he has the feeling that he never falls asleep again, until his alarm goes off and he opens his eyes, dazed with exhaustion and sadness.
10 “As I was going down impassive rivers / I no longer felt myself guided by haulers . . . ’—from “The Drunken Boat”, translated by Wallace Fowlie.
11 “And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!”—Ibid.